From: http://swami-krishnananda.org/total.thinking/total_4.html
From the book: The Art of Total Thinking
Excerpts; Chapter 4:
The beginning of our problem is our confrontation with the world itself. I pointed out to you in a few words yesterday that in our religious aspirations and spiritual pursuits we are really after the universal omnipresent mystery, the great Self of things, and every effort of ours is a movement towards the achievement of this goal. It is an impulsion from within ourselves towards the attainment of a wholeness which is the characteristic of the universal Self. But this wholeness is cut off and partitioned into a subjective percipient and an outside world. This is the point where we are standing now. Creation is only this much: a presentation of a world before a Creator who seems to be standing outside it. The Lucifer that is spoken of in biblical language is the world in front of us. He has become Satan because of warring with God, asserting an independence by his own self. He was an angel in the beginning; he became Satan afterwards because of his assertion of independence over and above the supremacy of God, the omnipotent Being.
The world was not originally an object of perception. It was an angel inseparable from the bosom of the Almighty. The universe so-called, the creation that we see before our eyes, was not this form which is before us at present. It was one with God’s almighty all-comprehensiveness. Similarly, Satan was an angel once upon a time. He was indistinguishable from God’s being. But something happened. Nobody knows how it happened and what actually happened. The angel began to feel a sense of intolerance; and to affirm an importance in the eyes of God or in the presence of the Almighty would be to defy the Almighty nature of God. Therefore, the world stood against God’s omnipresence when it asserted its objectivity and independence in that manner. Thus, the Satan of the Bible is the world that we see in front of us. He is not in hell, in the inferno, in fire and brimstone as literature will tell us. The very thing in front of our eyes is the Satan. And there is no use merely calling names and getting dissatisfied with the circumstances of life. “You idiot! Get away!” is not a solution to the idiocy of a person. You may say, “You wretched world, I kick you out in the name of God,” but it is not a spiritual solution. You may go on calling names, but the world is not going to listen to your abuses. It shall be what it is.
The great problem of spirituality is a reconciliation of ourselves with the evil which is standing before us and which has taken various forms of the so-called evils of the world. Originally it is a philosophical evil, a metaphysical evil in the form of the whole of creation outside consciousness. Then it becomes a cosmological evil, an epistemological evil, a psychological evil, a social evil, a political evil, a business evil, a moral evil, an ethical evil, every blessed evil. These are all the multitudinous children born to the original evil, the mother of all problems; and we are not going to be saved until we strike a balance between ourselves and this great foe in front of us. The foe happens to be reality, unfortunately for us. We do not struggle against an unreal foe.
The Deva and the Asura sampat mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavadgita are the moral and the immoral. But there is no use simply saying, “It is immoral. I shall not have anything to do with it.” We shall have something to do with it, if not today; we shall have to confront it and make it our own, and cannot brook it standing outside us as our enemy forever. It is not for nothing that the great Christ told us that we cannot make friendship with God unless we first make friendship with man. We must first make peace with our brother before we make peace with our Father in heaven. But we are always trying to make peace with the Father in heaven by condemning our brother, who is an evil before us.
Our religion, as it appears today, has to be shed. I have often been under the impression and am becoming convinced that it is high time that we abolished all the religions of the world and be without any religion. This idea arose in my mind because of the sorrow that I felt at the deceptive attitudes of religions and the camouflage which they put on in the name of morality and divinity, which is to their own ruin and the harm of society itself. We are grinning at God and mocking our own selves, and suffering a sorrow which has arisen because of our idea of morality, ethics, religion, spirituality, God-consciousness. This is the fate of religion today.
dvitīyᾱd vai bhayaṁ bhavati (Brihad. Up. 1.4.2). Whenever there is another near us, we are afraid of that ‘another’.
Such peculiar affirmations of a unitary existence manifests itself as the problem of the evil which is a problem in the scriptures of every religion. The moment we become religious, we close our eyes to the realities of life, condemning them as ungodly, irreligious, immoral, and unworthy of any consideration at all. Here begins our sorrow. That is why I said our sorrow begins the moment we start becoming religious. A wholly social, materialistic person is also happy in his own way. He doesn’t bother about anything. Everything is reconcilable to him. He is able to reconcile himself with everything, even with the worst of things in the world, and so he is happy in a way. But we are very virtuous persons, and our virtue is our sorrow. This is again something very unfortunate.
To be religious is to search for God, and to be spiritual is to affirm God’s originality of being.
Evil does not exist. Because it does not exist, it has become a problem. If it had really existed, it would not have been a confronting principle. Also, if it had been really existing, we would not be trying to overcome it.
But what is evil, again? Place this question before your own mind. It is a part of you struggling with another part of your own self. One part of you is the so-called present ‘I’ or ‘you’. The other part is what you are unable to reconcile yourself to. When you are attracted to anything in this world, you are pulled by a part of your own self that you see externally in the world of space and time. Otherwise, who can attract you in this world? How can a totally contrary being pull you in its own direction unless there is something akin to you in its character? Unless a feature belonging to yourself is present in the world outside, it cannot pull you, attract you and demand your attention. A part of you is present outside there. So you are seeing yourself in the things outside, and calling it an evil. You are trying to run away from a part of your own self. The evil of the world is a part of your own self, and therefore you cannot run away from evil. Just as you cannot say that you do not exist, you cannot say that evil does not exist. But at the same time, you cannot say that you are other than your own self. You cannot be something more than, or less than, or different from what you are. In the same way, the so-called principle of evil cannot be regarded as a feature totally alien to your own self.
Thus, the fight with evil is a fight with one’s own self.
When we take to religious practice or to the practice of yoga, we are in a terrible difficulty indeed. Very few can succeed in yoga or even religion or spirituality or anything worthwhile because the moral evil stares at us as an insoluble problem before us, and the ideas of the undesirable which have been implanted in our minds right from the various incarnations we have passed through obstruct our newly reoriented form of thinking, so even when we think religiously or in a so-called divine way, we are thinking in an old stereotyped fashion only.
The world has been a dear object. It has been dear, but it has been an object. That is the pitiable part of it. It is very good that it has been dear; everything has to be dear, but it is an object. How can an object be dear? Only the Self can be dear, says the Upanishad. Na vᾱ are sarvasya kᾱmᾱya sarvam priyam bhavati, ᾱtmanas tu kᾱmᾱya sarvam priyam bhavati (Brihad. Up. 2.4.5): Only the Self can be dear, and nothing else can be dear.
Unfortunately, the world is contending before us as an independent existence, and we have never felt that it is a part of us or we are a part of it, though in our loves for things we have unconsciously accepted a participation of ourselves in it and its participation in us, though we have spoken to the world with tongue in cheek or a little bit of salt in our mouths, not accepting it fully. We have not fully accepted that the world is a part of us, nor have we completely rejected it. We cannot reject it because we love it, but we cannot make it a part of ourselves because it asserts its independence. Even one’s wife, one’s son are independent individuals. They would not like to merge in us. The wife asserts her independence, the husband asserts his independence, the son and the daughter assert their independence. Though we may say they are ours, they are ours in some way only, under some conditions. Wholly they are not us. When even the dearest of objects has an independence of its own and it would not like to get absorbed in us totally and lose its individuality, the world would also not like it. So much love it cannot evince in regard to us. The world does not want from us so much love as to lose its independence totally and get absorbed into us. That is not possible. “No. I am what I am.”
From the book: The Art of Total Thinking
Excerpts; Chapter 4:
The beginning of our problem is our confrontation with the world itself. I pointed out to you in a few words yesterday that in our religious aspirations and spiritual pursuits we are really after the universal omnipresent mystery, the great Self of things, and every effort of ours is a movement towards the achievement of this goal. It is an impulsion from within ourselves towards the attainment of a wholeness which is the characteristic of the universal Self. But this wholeness is cut off and partitioned into a subjective percipient and an outside world. This is the point where we are standing now. Creation is only this much: a presentation of a world before a Creator who seems to be standing outside it. The Lucifer that is spoken of in biblical language is the world in front of us. He has become Satan because of warring with God, asserting an independence by his own self. He was an angel in the beginning; he became Satan afterwards because of his assertion of independence over and above the supremacy of God, the omnipotent Being.
The world was not originally an object of perception. It was an angel inseparable from the bosom of the Almighty. The universe so-called, the creation that we see before our eyes, was not this form which is before us at present. It was one with God’s almighty all-comprehensiveness. Similarly, Satan was an angel once upon a time. He was indistinguishable from God’s being. But something happened. Nobody knows how it happened and what actually happened. The angel began to feel a sense of intolerance; and to affirm an importance in the eyes of God or in the presence of the Almighty would be to defy the Almighty nature of God. Therefore, the world stood against God’s omnipresence when it asserted its objectivity and independence in that manner. Thus, the Satan of the Bible is the world that we see in front of us. He is not in hell, in the inferno, in fire and brimstone as literature will tell us. The very thing in front of our eyes is the Satan. And there is no use merely calling names and getting dissatisfied with the circumstances of life. “You idiot! Get away!” is not a solution to the idiocy of a person. You may say, “You wretched world, I kick you out in the name of God,” but it is not a spiritual solution. You may go on calling names, but the world is not going to listen to your abuses. It shall be what it is.
The great problem of spirituality is a reconciliation of ourselves with the evil which is standing before us and which has taken various forms of the so-called evils of the world. Originally it is a philosophical evil, a metaphysical evil in the form of the whole of creation outside consciousness. Then it becomes a cosmological evil, an epistemological evil, a psychological evil, a social evil, a political evil, a business evil, a moral evil, an ethical evil, every blessed evil. These are all the multitudinous children born to the original evil, the mother of all problems; and we are not going to be saved until we strike a balance between ourselves and this great foe in front of us. The foe happens to be reality, unfortunately for us. We do not struggle against an unreal foe.
The Deva and the Asura sampat mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavadgita are the moral and the immoral. But there is no use simply saying, “It is immoral. I shall not have anything to do with it.” We shall have something to do with it, if not today; we shall have to confront it and make it our own, and cannot brook it standing outside us as our enemy forever. It is not for nothing that the great Christ told us that we cannot make friendship with God unless we first make friendship with man. We must first make peace with our brother before we make peace with our Father in heaven. But we are always trying to make peace with the Father in heaven by condemning our brother, who is an evil before us.
Our religion, as it appears today, has to be shed. I have often been under the impression and am becoming convinced that it is high time that we abolished all the religions of the world and be without any religion. This idea arose in my mind because of the sorrow that I felt at the deceptive attitudes of religions and the camouflage which they put on in the name of morality and divinity, which is to their own ruin and the harm of society itself. We are grinning at God and mocking our own selves, and suffering a sorrow which has arisen because of our idea of morality, ethics, religion, spirituality, God-consciousness. This is the fate of religion today.
dvitīyᾱd vai bhayaṁ bhavati (Brihad. Up. 1.4.2). Whenever there is another near us, we are afraid of that ‘another’.
Such peculiar affirmations of a unitary existence manifests itself as the problem of the evil which is a problem in the scriptures of every religion. The moment we become religious, we close our eyes to the realities of life, condemning them as ungodly, irreligious, immoral, and unworthy of any consideration at all. Here begins our sorrow. That is why I said our sorrow begins the moment we start becoming religious. A wholly social, materialistic person is also happy in his own way. He doesn’t bother about anything. Everything is reconcilable to him. He is able to reconcile himself with everything, even with the worst of things in the world, and so he is happy in a way. But we are very virtuous persons, and our virtue is our sorrow. This is again something very unfortunate.
To be religious is to search for God, and to be spiritual is to affirm God’s originality of being.
Evil does not exist. Because it does not exist, it has become a problem. If it had really existed, it would not have been a confronting principle. Also, if it had been really existing, we would not be trying to overcome it.
But what is evil, again? Place this question before your own mind. It is a part of you struggling with another part of your own self. One part of you is the so-called present ‘I’ or ‘you’. The other part is what you are unable to reconcile yourself to. When you are attracted to anything in this world, you are pulled by a part of your own self that you see externally in the world of space and time. Otherwise, who can attract you in this world? How can a totally contrary being pull you in its own direction unless there is something akin to you in its character? Unless a feature belonging to yourself is present in the world outside, it cannot pull you, attract you and demand your attention. A part of you is present outside there. So you are seeing yourself in the things outside, and calling it an evil. You are trying to run away from a part of your own self. The evil of the world is a part of your own self, and therefore you cannot run away from evil. Just as you cannot say that you do not exist, you cannot say that evil does not exist. But at the same time, you cannot say that you are other than your own self. You cannot be something more than, or less than, or different from what you are. In the same way, the so-called principle of evil cannot be regarded as a feature totally alien to your own self.
Thus, the fight with evil is a fight with one’s own self.
When we take to religious practice or to the practice of yoga, we are in a terrible difficulty indeed. Very few can succeed in yoga or even religion or spirituality or anything worthwhile because the moral evil stares at us as an insoluble problem before us, and the ideas of the undesirable which have been implanted in our minds right from the various incarnations we have passed through obstruct our newly reoriented form of thinking, so even when we think religiously or in a so-called divine way, we are thinking in an old stereotyped fashion only.
The world has been a dear object. It has been dear, but it has been an object. That is the pitiable part of it. It is very good that it has been dear; everything has to be dear, but it is an object. How can an object be dear? Only the Self can be dear, says the Upanishad. Na vᾱ are sarvasya kᾱmᾱya sarvam priyam bhavati, ᾱtmanas tu kᾱmᾱya sarvam priyam bhavati (Brihad. Up. 2.4.5): Only the Self can be dear, and nothing else can be dear.
Unfortunately, the world is contending before us as an independent existence, and we have never felt that it is a part of us or we are a part of it, though in our loves for things we have unconsciously accepted a participation of ourselves in it and its participation in us, though we have spoken to the world with tongue in cheek or a little bit of salt in our mouths, not accepting it fully. We have not fully accepted that the world is a part of us, nor have we completely rejected it. We cannot reject it because we love it, but we cannot make it a part of ourselves because it asserts its independence. Even one’s wife, one’s son are independent individuals. They would not like to merge in us. The wife asserts her independence, the husband asserts his independence, the son and the daughter assert their independence. Though we may say they are ours, they are ours in some way only, under some conditions. Wholly they are not us. When even the dearest of objects has an independence of its own and it would not like to get absorbed in us totally and lose its individuality, the world would also not like it. So much love it cannot evince in regard to us. The world does not want from us so much love as to lose its independence totally and get absorbed into us. That is not possible. “No. I am what I am.”
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